One year ago: Robert McNamara
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Robert McNamara, the architect of the Vietnam War and President Kennedy’s secretary of Defense, died a year ago at 93.
McNamara, a former president of Ford Motor Co. who remained at the Defense Department into President Lyndon Johnson’s administration, in later years questioned many of the decisions made during the Vietnam era.
Interviewed by filmmaker Errol Morris for the documentary ‘The Fog of War,’ McNamara said:
We all make mistakes. I don’t know any military commander, who is honest, who would say he has not made a mistake. There’s a wonderful phrase: ‘The fog of war.’ What ‘the fog of war’ means is: War is so complex it’s beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables. Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate
--Times staff writers